


Escape Velocity

by blythechild



Category: V for Vendetta (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 04:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>V sees his pull towards Evey in terms of astrophysics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escape Velocity

**Author's Note:**

> This was another picfor1000 challenge response. The picture prompt reminded me of a black hole.
> 
> This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over any characters herein. It was created as a personal entertainment.

Floating. That’s what it felt like. An undetermined navigational pattern; untethered and unrestrained by the laws of physics. He enjoyed laws. They were predictable and orderly, and when they weren’t, one broke them and created newer, better ones to take their places. Nature abhors a vacuum. It was the only way to stave off chaos and it was the only paradigm that he understood.

She sighed and brushed an errant strand of hair behind her ear. From across the room, in the shelter of a shadow, he focused on the bare base of her neck. She shifted slightly and he watched the bones move beneath her skin, how they announced themselves without being seen. He tried to strip away the skin and hair from them to see if she would still seem herself without them.

Yes, he thought. I could see her without eyes, find her without senses, even from the depths of space I would know her. Like returning to something ancient and familiar after eons in the cold unknown.

He took a step forward without thinking. It felt cold to be at such a distance.

Yet, she doesn’t know me. Not even a slip of paper from the volume of my life. And she doesn’t sense the way things bend towards her – the way I bend towards her against my will, my judgment and my own laws. 

He took another blind step. His path was no longer aimless. The energy of his muscles pricked at his skin luring him to the center like liquid mercury. His scarred skin grew tight; becoming a million taunt loci that felt as if they could slice through his clothing with their sudden, terrible focus. There was no doubt where he was going now. He fell into the worn slipstream that ran from him to her easily; so easily that it made him ache with comfort and resentment simultaneously. 

I have never tread here before. Why does it seem so…simple? His intellect remained silent while the rest of him followed the pull of his skin. How could you let this happen? In the twilight of your life, you found a force stronger than yourself and haplessly fell into her orbit.

All of his planning, all of his interlacing theorems became streaks of useless energy racing toward her gaping, midnight void. Reaching the frontiers of that unknown land, the streaks extinguished for all time discovering too late that her gravity outdistanced their escape velocity. 

So cold. He always felt cold. Her skin glowed under the reading lamp; pale, translucent. But was it an illusion? She was so pale that she looked as she was made of bone. Would she feel warm? The way that she drew everything to her he thought that she must be on fire inside, but he could not tell just by looking. No one could measure such an unknown from a distance and those who foolishly ventured into the phenomenon never returned to say one way or the other.

He had taken a few more steps and was now at the corona’s edge that held her. She sighed again and flipped the page of her book following the text with her eyes and the tilt of her head. He watched as the light shifted with her and nearly laughed aloud at the visual incongruity of seeing the shapes around her contort and warp in order to remain at her center. As if on strings the edges of the pillows pulled with the twist of her neck, the indistinct shapes beyond her shimmered and reassembled with the arch of her brows and the tapping of her fingertips. How could she be so blissfully unaware? 

_Does a hurricane perceive the winds that rip buildings apart or the waves that swallow ships into the sea? It just is, and so are the winds and the waves._

So what does that make me, he thought. 

_You are the man walking into the ocean when everyone else has packed up and fled – who knows why._

But I need to know! Everything has a purpose – a meaning! 

_How ironic coming from a man whose actions so often mirrors chaos. Learn to live with disappointment. Did you ever consider that maybe others wanted to know why as well, perhaps even… her?_

No, he had never considered justifying himself to others. He suddenly wondered if he appeared like a black hole to outsiders. The way that he consumed their lives, doused their purpose to fuel his own made him smile behind his mask. In an instant, he imagined parting his dark cape in a thin, dirty alley and revealing a star on the verge of supernova to his victims. Energy snapping out viciously from his core eager to harvest their lives and make them his own.

He was behind her now, his hands resting on the rise of the sofa just out of her eye line. His lower half was illuminated by the lamplight while his upper body remained in shadow. He was still cold; her luminosity betrayed nothing to him. He looked down, past her neck, her shoulders to his scuffed boots and the irregular flagstones beneath them. So flawed, so real…

_There is still time to escape. Your light hasn’t reached the event horizon yet. Just walk out of the ocean…_

But his hand had already risen to his mask. As he removed it, he saw its edges distort and twist towards her becoming less like an object and more a variegated swirl blending into the background. Softly, quietly he bent until his face hovered just above the base of her neck. 

He inhaled.

He passed the outpost of return without a backwards glance, and brushed his lips lightly across her neck as if it was a forgone conclusion. An unstoppable force meeting an immoveable object. She tasted like fire. 

She turned.

“You came, finally.” She gasped.

“I no longer had a choice.” He said as he disappeared into her forever.


End file.
